Feeling Good
by Screaming Faeries
Summary: A chance meeting, three years after the battle of Hogwarts. A chance meeting that completely changes how Draco ever felt about anything. He's never been more sure about something, yet so confused - all he knows it's that it feels good. Luna/Draco. Complete. Done for ProudToBeSlytherin's 100 Songs Challenge at the HPFC forum! #69 - Feeling Good by Muse (cover).
1. Birds Flying High

Everyone knew that Luna was quite, unnecessarily unusual. I use the term unnecessarily, because it was completely unnecessary. I remembered her at school, as she walked along the corridors, her attention elsewhere, her lips stretched across her teeth. Her smile never quite reached her vacant, silvery eyes. She stared a lot, a hell of a lot. She didn't seem to understand that her penetrating, misty gaze was quite enough to make even the most self-assured man crumble into bits. But I don't think she ever realised it.

I saw her three years after the Dark Lord was defeated, and the wizarding world was still in recovery from the destruction and desecration of the ministry and Hogwarts, not to mention all of their teachers and students. Children were being born into this new era; couples were flocking to be wed. I knew that Weasley had married that mudblood, Granger; I had seen a particular sickening report in the marriage section in the _Daily Prophet_ earlier that year. The quote from Ron had also claimed how happy he was to announce that the Chosen One himself had proposed to his younger sister, and it was apparent that Potter would be marrying the Weasley girl sometime in the future, too. I had seen Potter already, strutting through the ministry one day like he was someone special, on his way to the new and improved Department of Mysteries. I wasn't sure what his post-Hogwarts job was, but it was something better and apparently more impressive than what I was doing. I was trying, and failing miserably and repeatedly, to get a job within the ministry. Everybody knew where my ties had previously lied, and no one seemed to want to have anything to do with me.

It seemed that everyone was feeling good after the end of Lord Voldemort. Banners had hung from windows and flags fluttered in gardens, people were throwing street parties – still, three years after it had all happened. It was embarrassing, really. I was sure that I was the only one who felt so bitterly miserable after He was conquered. I wasn't miserable _because _he was defeated, no. I was merely embarrassed at my own stupidity to have linked myself with Voldemort, I was angry with my mother and father for having stooped to the level of becoming Death Eaters and bringing me up in the darker part of the wizarding world. Most of all, I hated Harry Potter, because he got all the fame and glory, even more so after he brought down Voldemort, and now I was the one left, bitter and struggling in the world after Hogwarts, with most of my family and friends either uncomfortable about keeping ties with me, or rotting in Azkaban.

It was the 6th of August, three years after my seventh and final year at Hogwarts, that I saw Luna Lovegood in London.

I didn't realise it was her at first. I was sat outside at a coffee shop, sipping my espresso delicately. I'd had a particularly hard week, and I was trying to take my mind of things by allowing myself to relax a little – when I spotted this beautiful blonde woman walking down the street. It was like everyone else tuned into greyscale; she was the only one I could see. Her hair was half-tied up in a ponytail, the rest flowing down her back and over her shoulders in slightly straggly waves. It was still the same dirty blonde colour, but it seemed a bit lighter, somehow. Her eyes were focused directly forwards, wide and as silvery as ever. Her eyelashes were thick and her make-up was soft, not overdone. She was wearing a muggle suit (which was of course appropriate as we were in the middle of muggle London), made up of a knee length skirt and matching jacket in a pinstripe pattern. She had on dark stockings and those heeled shoes. I've never understood why muggle women wear them, but Luna looked great in them. She seemed to have grown about five inches.

Before I could stop myself, I found myself rising in my chair and calling out, "Luna!"

She stopped in her tracks; I saw her thoughts snap back to her gaze instantly, and she looked around in all directions. I shrank back into my seat, cursing myself inwardly for acting so automatically. Those huge, mesmerising eyes, however, locked on with mine, and I found myself unable to look away, only keep staring unblinkingly back into those great, shining silver pools, as they grew bigger, and bigger, overwhelming me—

"—Hello, Draco," she was saying. She was right in front of my face, pulling the opposite chair out and sitting down in it. My tongue and throat felt dry, and I realised my mouth was hanging open. I coughed slightly and covered my mouth, then rubbed the back of my head. I adjusted my sitting position, and hastily reminded myself _who I was_.

"Hello. Luna, is it?" I asked her softly, trying to ease that sneer back into my voice, the one I was so proud of back in school, the one that managed to make most of the Slytherin girls do whatever I wanted them to. Luna, however, was unaffected. She smiled complacently, and pushed her handbag onto the table, then clasped her hands in front of her.

"Yes, Luna, or I mean, you used to call me…er…" She paused, like it what she was going to say was something she found a little embarrassing. "Loony."

I was momentarily taken aback, and then a ghost of a smile flittered across my face. "Yeah…I did."

"So, what did you call me over for, Draco?"

Damn. Luna always had been excellent at asking the most uncomfortable and awkward questions. I tried not to look her in the eye again, and focused on a bluebottle that was creeping over her shoulder. "Well. You know, it's not often now that I see anyone from Hogwarts. I just thought it would be appropriate to say hello."

Her pink smile widened. I noticed she had a smidge of lipstick on her front tooth. "Really? You wanted to say hello to me?" I tried not to stare at her teeth, as I nodded, slowly. Then she started blurting out a bit of a commentary about her life since Hogwarts, and truthfully, I wasn't giving her my full attention. I was watching her, yes; I couldn't stop staring at her. I found myself picking out all of her minor imperfections, but I adored every single one. The way her the lipstick spread more onto her front teeth as she talked faster and for longer, her bitten down stubs of nails, the way her wand was tucked behind her ear – a very silly thing to do in the middle of a muggle populated area. How did I never notice her at school? She was an unbelievable beauty, so surreal the way she sat there opposite me, almost glowing in the sunlight.

I focused for a little while on what she was saying. Ah…of course. She was having a brilliant life, just like everyone else from school was. She had helped Harry Potter and his friends of course, she had fought for her school in the battle, not ran for cover to her father, like I had done. She had received awards, triumphed, been praised and adored by many. She had a great job; she'd become editor in chief of the _Daily Prophet_, and was promising to completely change the way they ran their stories, starting by the ultimate dismissal of Rita Skeeter, and announcing her Animagus status to the wizarding world. Why had I called her over? What had I expected from her? Of _course _she was going to be one of these, having a fantastic life after the Dark Times; she was a perfect candidate for it. She was going to go off and have a brilliant life, changing the face of the _Prophet _– she'd probably become a teacher too, sooner or later, and get married in the Spring (probably to Longbottom), and have loads of little blonde kids that would grow up to admire her and all of her oddities until she died, at a ripe old age, after a long, blissful, fulfilling life.

"Are you alright, Draco?" She asked me suddenly, bringing me back down to earth after my short daydream about Luna's life. I was immediately aware that I'd been picturing her Neville Longbottom marrying her, wearing a ridiculously huge and spangled white frock, but still managing to look effortless and wonderful. I disliked the vision of her and Neville instantly, and found my face contorting in anger as if the scene was really happening in front of me. I was grinding my teeth in frustration. "You don't look so well," she continued, peering into my face. "Are you having a deep thought?"

My eyebrows knitted together. What a strange question. "Yeah, erm. I have a lot on my mind, actually, at the moment."

Luna nodded sympathetically. "I would imagine so, after all, you were a Death Eater," I sat up bolt upright, staring at her in shock. She was so open about it, so comfortable with how she just let these words flow out of her open mouth, uncaring. She leaned forwards slightly, and I became aware that her cleavage was pressing together as it strained against her folded arms. "Plus, it may be Wrackspurts. It's a shame I don't have my Spectrespecs on me, I could have taken a look inside your head for you."

I continued to stare at her. I was still in shock at her freely announcing my Death Eater status, like I used to work at a newspaper store or something. Now she was bringing up this nonsense. It was all so confusing, the words "spectrespecs" and "wrackspurts" and "Death Eater" lingered in my ears, all being wound up with the distraction of the creamy, white skin of her cleavage just below my gaze. I searched her face for a hint of a smile; a sign that this was merely her idea of a joke. Nope, deadly serious. I groaned inwardly. How did I manage to find myself nursing an attraction for someone so…weird?

While I was addling myself over what to say next to her, she stood up suddenly, knocking the chair back behind her. She didn't seem to notice. Her smile stretched again across her mouth – but her lipstick had worn away by now. "It's been nice talking to you, Draco," she held her hand out. There were tiny scars that looked like burns on her hands. "I hope we might bump into each other again…you seem…different, now. You're not the same Draco Malfoy we all knew in school. I see that now."

I was dumbstruck, once again. I had never been so speechless in my life. I held out my hand and stood up, coughing slightly to clear my throat, and I looked down at her soft, heart shaped face. "Goodbye, Luna," I bade her, and shook her hand. Her skin was so warm, so delicate. I didn't want to let go of her hand, but she was slipping out of my grasp, turning away and hurrying down the street, holding her fingers up behind her in a small wave.


	2. Sun in the Sky

The second time I met Luna Lovegood, was six months after that surprising meeting in the middle of London.

I had managed to secure myself a good job at Gringotts. I was doing excellently as a banker, and finally was beginning to feel like I had a place in this world again, and like my life wasn't going to be a miserable affair of wishing I wasn't the person I used to be, and silently, desperately craving a life like Harry Potter's. I had heard of his sickening wedding, and most unbelievably of all, I had received an invite. I considered going, really, but I just couldn't force myself to go, and listen to the silent whispers all around me, all the judgements.

I had returned to the Malfoy Manor on a cold February afternoon. It was about five pm, but it had come over very dark, the clouds were rolling in thick and grey, and it was pouring with rain. I was standing alone in the doorway on the balcony. The weather was terrible, but I felt so happy. I had a brilliant job, my mother was feeling a lot better, and I was finally beginning to feel like people were no longer judging me for something that happening a while back, something that was in the past, my past, and everyone else's past – it was gone. I felt more achieved, and best of all, I had some of my old attitude back. I no longer found myself lurking in coffee shops, dwelling over my sorry excuse for a life. Nothing, nothing at all could make me feel anything but blissful euphoria, right now.

But wait…what was that? Someone pale was coming from far away towards the big, iron-wrought gates. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out who it was heading right for my home.

She stopped at the gates, and looked up at the balcony. I felt my stomach sinking and my heart start to flutter erratically. She had no umbrella, and she was wearing grey dress robes, but they seemed to be too big for her. One of her shoulders was exposed, and her hair wasn't tied up today. It was hanging, long and limp, plastered to her face as the rain hammered ever harder on her head. I darted forwards, mindless of the rain, and leaned over the balcony. She could see me; I knew she could see me. Those great, misty eyes had _always _seen me.

"Luna!?" I shouted over the thunder and the rain. She continued to blink at me, nonplussed. I pulled my wand out of my pocket and waved it in the direction of her, and the gates swung open. I beckoned my free hand to indicate that she should enter. She walked forwards, slowly.

I flew down the stairs and wrenched the great front doors open. She was stood there, like a strange, eerie, doll. Her skin was glowing against the night. She looked almost unreal.

"Are you going to invite me in, Draco?" She asked quietly. I blinked, and stood back, nodding my head. She walked in, past me, and stood, dripping on my hallway floor. She looked around her, her eyes gazing up at the chandelier, at the portraits of multiple Malfoys and Blacks on the walls, and finally, her stare lingered on the door that led to the basement. The basement where she had been held captive, when she should have been completing her sixth year at Hogwarts. I felt my stomach plummet again, as I also remembered that bitter time. How could she walk back in here after that?

"Luna?" I said slowly, rolling her name around in my mouth. It sounded good, me saying her name. She looked up at me questioningly, unblinking. "Aren't you…scared?"

She returned her gaze back to that basement door, and a small, strained smile appeared on her features. "I know you're not going to lock me back up, Draco. I know you're not that person."

"Right," I replied. I didn't really want to stand here and have a mythical and entirely confusing discussion about what kind of a person I was, when she didn't _really _know me at all. "Can you tell me what you're doing here?"

"May I sit down?" Luna bunched her hands up in the front of her dress robes, trying to prevent the continuous dripping of her wet clothes onto my floor. I realised that she would probably need dry clothes. I sighed. While I was strangely smitten with Luna, and I wasn't entirely displeased at her random visit, I wished she could have warned me. I'd been expecting to retire to bed early, so I would be up, refreshed and alert for work. That wasn't going to happen now. I started walking towards the staircase, and beckoned over to her.

"Follow me; I'll get you some dry things."

"Why are you helping me?"

I felt irritation rising in my stomach. I was so confused about how I felt about her, and she was here in my house. Instead of ignoring her I was offering her help, why did she have to stand there and question me? "You're dripping all over my floor! I don't have a house elf anymore, you know!" I snapped, and she winced, looking taken aback. I considered apologising, but I couldn't form the words on my tongue. I turned my back on her again, and started up the stairs. "_Follow me_," I told her, again.

Luckily, my mother was quite small and thin, and the same build as Luna. I handed her some clothes, and she accepted them.

"Draco, will your mother mind me wearing her clothes?"

"She's out of town," I watched as she held up a black top and a similar, long black skirt and cloak. "I'm sorry there isn't anything more…of colour."

"Oh no, it's fine," Luna smiled brightly and started peeling her robes off her shoulders. I stepped back towards the doorway. Was Luna not bothered that she was stripping off right in front of me? I tried to look away, but… "After all, I know your mother and father were both Death Eaters, so it's not unlikely that they would prefer to wear black." There it was again; mentioning the words _Death Eater_ like it wasn't a problem at all. I felt the heat rising in my neck and face. She was half naked, she was mentioning my parents and their old Death Eater status. She had no shame, she didn't care. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was stood against the window, looking out at the rainy scene, and her robes dropped to the floor. She was silhouetted against the glass panes, her figure so soft, delicate, she seemed so fragile. I wanted to come forward, my arms outstretched, grab her tiny waist, feel her hot, silky skin under my palms. She spun around suddenly, and I realised she had managed to dress quickly. Strangely, she hadn't seemed to notice that I'd been gawping at her while she undressed.

Her hands found the tresses of the long black skirt and held them out. I watched her looking in the mirror, biting her. She voiced how unsure she was about black suiting her, but I thought she looked beautiful. The black of my mother's clothes contrasted sharply with her luminous white skin. Her blonde hair was still quite flat and damp against her head, but I noticed now how she had lined her eyes with quite thick, dark eyeshadow. She was a vision. I felt breathless.

I gestured to my parents' bed to suggest she sat down, and I sat on the dark red loveseat under the window. Luna sat up against the gilt headboard, looking up and around at the velvet canopy.

"Luna. Explain why you've come to my house in the middle of the night."

And she did. She droned on about a party that she had been to, a kind of pre-wedding event. It was in the next village from here, and after a few drinks she had started to remember me. She remembered the manor, and remembered that it was around this area. She remembered the days and nights she was confined in the basement as a prisoner. She remembered that I used to bring morsels of food down to her, stowed away under my cloak from the dinner table. I felt that heat in my face again, I had barely remembered that myself.

She'd had an argument with a boy that had been trying to ask her to marry him, Rolf Scamander he was called. I wondered about him for a moment, trying to place him in my head, but I couldn't remember him at all. Her father wanted her to marry him because he knew the boy's father; they had been great friends once upon a time. But Luna didn't like him. She didn't want to marry someone she barely knew or cared about. She didn't think it was fair.

She was babbling on, and on, tears forming in her eyes. I still didn't wholly understand why she had chosen to come here. I walked towards her and sat at the foot of the bed, trying to give her what I thought was a sensitive and caring look. If possible, she looked more beautiful with her great eyes leaking, her porcelain skin becoming patchy and red in some areas as she started to cry, softly. I didn't remember Luna _ever _crying, not once, while she was locked in our basement. She looked after the other people who were locked down there, and she always smiled that strange, eerie smile at him, when he went down there to check on them.

I couldn't help myself. She was talking non-stop, but her words were becoming jumbled. I leaned forwards and pressed my lips against hers. She froze as I felt her lips against mine and tasted her tears. My hands found their way into her damp hair, snaked around her slim neck; finally, I was finally feeling that beautiful skin against my hands. She was so soft, so innocent. I opened my eyes slightly, and saw her staring back at me, but not her usual wide gaze. Her eyes were hooded, her lids heavy. Suddenly, she was kissing me back, her arms reaching forwards and her small hands resting on my waist, sneaking up the back of my shirt. I sighed into her mouth at her touch, which seemed to send jolts of electricity up my spine, and her tongue probed between my lips.

It was one of those movie-type kisses, were your mind goes blank and all you can see and hear and feel is fireworks. Every time Luna touched me I felt like I was going to crumble into dust, within these mere moments she seemed to have grasped an unbelievable control over me. She was perfect. I would do anything to stay here in this moment forever, pressed up against this beautiful girl while she whispered into my mouth and bit my lower lip gently. I was becoming a shell of the man I was. What was this power she had over me?

Suddenly, she was pulling back, looking away from me. My mouth hung open; I was panting slightly. How could she leave me hanging, now? "No…" she mumbled, and stood up quickly. "No…this is…wrong…Draco…I'm sorry…"

"Wait..!" I called out, but it was too late. She had fled out of the bedroom, gone with a whip of long blonde hair around the door frame, and leaving nothing but the scent of pine cones in her wake, and her pile of dress robes on the floor.


	3. Breeze Drifting On By

While my life was starting to feel much better, I still couldn't stop thinking about Luna. A startling white girl with waist length blonde hair haunted my dreams every night, and I vowed that I would find her again. She had reduced me to a mess of a man in only a few minutes, I couldn't have lost her forever.

I started by finding and visiting her house. It was a great, black affair, shaped weirdly cylindrical, and was on top of a huge hill. When I knocked, however, and an older man answered, he told me she was away, and had been away for a while.

"…and who are you, anyway?" Xeno Lovegood called out as I was walking back down the path, trying to avoid treading on any of the Drigible plums that were growing from their bush, very close to the edge of the path. I turned my head to him.

"Malfoy, Draco Malfoy," I responded, and turned my nose back up at the unkempt Drigible plum bush that was getting caught on my ankles.

"Well, Malfoy…I have an inkling Luna may be at the Lake District."

I asked him why before I could properly think about it. Within seconds he was launching into a discussion about a sighting of a Crumple Horned Snorkack around the Lakes. I turned on the spot, desperate to get away from this man, and apparated instantly.

It was cold and windy where I apparated at the Lakes. I was concerned that it would take me hours to search all over for wherever Luna could be, but I was determined to. However, it soon became clear that I wouldn't have to do much searching. I could see flag fluttering over a hill, and upon further inspection, it appeared to be attached to the highest tower of a huge wizard's tent, with three high turrets, a huge, sprinkling fountain at the front, and I could see big birds, that loked like eagles, circling the turrets.

Luna was definitely there. The tent-castle was a shade of lurid orange, and the turrets and roves were cerulean. As I got closer, I noticed that the water coming out of the fountain wasn't even water, it was pumpkin juice. I knocked on the door of the tent, and Luna wrenched the door open instantly.

She looked…crazy, was the right way to put it. She was wearing floor length, overly baggy robes in the same shade of vibrant orange as the tent, but the inner lining of the hood and cloak was shocking pink. Her hair was fluffy, like it had been recently washed and dried, and was bunched up on top of her head, her wand stuck through it for safekeeping. There were long, curling tendrils trailing down the sides of her face. "How did you find me here?" She gasped, quite overdramatically.

I stepped forward into her tent, making her hop back quickly. The inside of the tent was even worse than the exterior. The walls were all decorated with highly gaudy, graphic patterns with horribly clashing colours such as bright red and turquoise, or dandelion yellow and deep purple. There were strange portraits hung up on the canvas walls of the tent, of weird animals. One example was a creature that looked remarkably like a sausage dog upon first inspection, but when I looked further, it seemed to have the body of a long, scaled fish. Luna coughed haughtily, and swirled around to glare at me. It would have maybe been a little menacing, if it wasn't for the comical way her billowing, sunset robes got caught in the door as she slammed it shut.

After tugging herself free, I'd made myself comfortable in a nearby, squashy armchair (an ugly baby pink thing decorated with multi-coloured butterflies that fluttered across the surface).

"Why are you here?"

I looked away, trying to avoid her penetrating gaze. Eventually, I focused on my fingers, and concentrated on knotting them together. I didn't want to be like this. I wanted to be the sly, slimy person I was in school. I didn't want to be held back by things as trivial as _feelings_. I didn't want to be so affected by girls, especially not by this girl. She was so unusual, so strange. Even now, standing here in those ridiculous robes, in the middle of this stupid tent. It was hard to take her seriously. But she _still_, somehow managed to look ludicrously beautiful. I looked up at her, for the first time meeting her brilliant silver eyes, and not allowing myself to drown in them.

"I can't stop thinking about you, Luna."

Her hands dropped from her hips, and her mouth formed a small, silent 'o'. She was speechless, probably for the first time in a long time. No odd comment, no funny question. Just blissful silence, allowing me to continue. I had to continue, no matter how bad the urge was to run out of this mad tent right now.

"I think…I think I am in love with you." My gaze faltered, but I managed to keep it on her wholly, analysing her expression. Her eyes watered.

"D…Draco…" she murmured, her hand rising up to cover her mouth. I stood up from the armchair and stepped towards her. I grasped her in my arms, wrapping myself around her. I kissed every inch of her face I could reach while she stood stock still.

Eventually she came round, melted out of her icy stature, and wound her arms around my neck. I gripped her tiny waist under my hands and meshed my lips with hers. I felt those fireworks again, heard her moaning into my mouth as I pushed her robes over her shoulders and stroked the length of her back with my index finger.

I felt so good in that moment. We both did. That, for me, was the height of happiness. There was no worry, no fear, and no paranoia. There was just Luna.

I was so caught up in the good feeling, that I didn't notice the parchment that I know now, was lying on the table beside the armchair I'd been sat on. The parchment that had Luna's signature on it, finally accepting the proposal from Rolf Scamander.


End file.
